This was WAY weird. I came out to get tools going for about three hours we came up with in the middle of the week to work on the chicken coop and there was squeaking and squawking going on. Mr. Red was jumping up and down, carrying on something fierce. But let me give you some history about that…
The night before, I went in to make sure the babies were tucked in nice and sound. It was only their third night outside alone with a sole heat lamp. And while the night temps were hanging in the mid 50’s, I didn’t want to take any chances. So about three in the morning, I went out to make sure the light hadn’t burned out or anything terrible, they still don’t have all their feathers in… Once a mother hen, always a mother hen I suppose…
Anyway, I found four of the chicks had squeezed through the ‘chicken’ wire. They were in Red’s little makeshift house (and old dog crate with a large black plastic trash sack wrapped around it to keep out the rain. I thought, awwwwww… he’s lonely. So the next morning, I move his ‘bed’ in with the girls and put him back in the chicken run. Fast forward to six hours later and I come out to all the commotion and seeing him jumping up and down like a crazy red rooster.
Ryan drove up just as I was realizing that there was a HAWK in the run with all the chicks and Red. This is what he was going nuts over. He might be a big tuff rooster, but he is not much of a match for a young chicken hawk… even Red is less than six months old! So, below see the sort of motions sickness evoking film we got of the chicken hawks and his narrow escape….
There was a small opening, around eight inches high and around four feet long where this bird got in. And here I was blaming the loss of two chicks on the cat or possibly the dogs…
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease" ~ Thomas Jefferson
